Staten Island resident Robert McKenna recounts search for Etan Patz

View full sizeStaten Island AdvanceRobert McKenna, who was a young cop involved in the search for Etan Patz the night following his disappearance, described the investigation as a team effort on the cop's part with no one giving up.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Last month's confession in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz brought the case back into the public consciousness.

But it was never far from the thoughts of Staten Islander Robert McKenna, who, as a young cop, was involved in the exhausting and fruitless search for the boy.

McKenna, an Annadale resident who retired as a lieutenant in 1997, can still picture himself on the streets of SoHo searching for Etan on the night of his disappearance.

After working as a rookie cop from 1974-1975, McKenna was laid off for nearly three years before being rehired. He was assigned to the Neighborhood Stabilization Unit II for Manhattan South, part of three easily mobilized NYPD task forces responsible for crowd control and searching for missing elderly and children.

On the night of young Etan's disappearance, McKenna was working a 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift and was immediately called down to SoHo to take part in the search for the youngster. A group of 18 cops was paired off either with another officer or with a detective.

"It was getting dark, so we needed to appear more friendly," said McKenna on why uniformed-cops were required to join the plain-clothed detectives.

McKenna and his partnered detective went to every apartment on the west side of Prince Street to Spring Street, knocking on the door of every resident with Etan's photo in hand, and acquiring any details they could and scheduling follow-ups. In the meantime, teams of other officers stopped people in the streets to question them.

While McKenna says that he was there only for uniformed presence and that the detective was the one gathering information, the frustration of the search and his desire to find Etan and bring him home was relentless.

McKenna, who helped reunite a half-dozen missing children with their families during his career, described that wonderful moment of relief: "Your body just naturally relaxes, and you feel sort of proud ... It's part of the nature of making people happy."

That was what he wanted to experience with Etan's case. He never had that opportunity.

Following the canvass of the neighborhood, McKenna and the other officers in the unit searched rooftops, backyards, elevators, basements and boiler rooms.

"We went through hundreds of green-bin garbage dumpsters and dumpsters and looked under cars...If there was a box in the area, it would've been opened," McKenna said.

McKenna, married and with a 9-month-old daughter at the time, said that as young cops with families, they knew the anguish of a missing child. Not one of the officers wanted to leave the search that night, but had no choice other than to resume in the morning.

Describing the car ride following their initial search for Etan, McKenna said, "Not a word was said. Nobody gave up. We didn't care who found him, as long as he was found."

On the days following Etan's disappearance, McKenna and his fellow officers searched the nearby open fields in the pouring rain, many of the them skipping lunch to continue with the investigation.

"I can still picture myself standing in the street waiting, going out again, and waiting," said McKenna, as he described the constant need to go back and recheck everything just to make sure nothing was missed during his two nights taking part in the case.